The present invention relates generally to the field of sentiment analysis, and more particularly to analyzing the tone of legal documents.
An Opinion of the Court (i.e., “court opinion,” “judicial opinion,” “legal opinion”) is a court's official decision in a case. The opinion is a decision written by one or more justices that details the legal principles and rationales that the one or more justices relied upon to reach their decision. The court opinion includes various parts, including the heading information, the prior history, the summary of the facts, and the opinion (i.e., decision from the court which constitutes the law). Oftentimes, the court opinion includes multiple opinions reflecting the different rationales that the justices used to reach their decision. If more than half of the justices agree, than a majority opinion is issued. If some justices agree with the majority opinion, but base their decision on a different rationale, one or more concurring opinions are issued in addition to the majority opinion. Similarly, if some justices disagree with the majority opinion, one or more dissenting opinions are issued.